There's a new skin in town which might have you wanting to head over to the nude beach. Nope, I don't know of one, but I am sure a quick search will get you a multitude of choices. Or you might opt for something slightly more dramatic and showy -- hence my Tousled Isabella hair from HOH.

This is a Crys_SK_Glam_Makeup_Tatoo_BlackEB from PXL Creations with tattoos by Nardya. If you have been following that drama, you may or may not be in the PXL camp. If you ARE and would like to have this skin, then join the group (free) and put the store in your picks. After about 24 hours you can click on the LARGE vendor in the store and receive this skin. I have to say it is lovely and while not an everyday thing for me, a welcome addition to my chubby inventory.

Well DUH! It wasn't until I tried to photograph a gorgeous new skin (coming up later) that I realized I had LOST Windlight and the ability to change lighting direction etc. etc. Oh my.

SO, that means the pictures from Hair Fair Part 1 and 2 are NOT as good as usual. So figure the hair looks even better. Actually I think I was paying so much attention to the hair that I wasn't looking at the shadows on my face -- bad, BAD photographer -LOL.

ANYWAY ---- Two more sans Windlight photos to show you but I assume you will forgive me. It is back now although there are OTHER issues (aren't there always?).

So I got this super cute curler hair at House of Heart last week (not free). I just love it and I guess I better take a good close up with WINDLIGHT so you can really see it (wink). The clothes however are part of a four color set of jammies from the SYD - Layniewear booth at the hair fair. It also comes in a gold, an orange and a blue. Very cute and perfect for lounging around. There is a big pile of dollarbies at the booth and I only bought this in hopes it would work with my new hair. And it does. Kewl!

This is Joy in mahogany from House of Heart, another color of the jammies from SYD (hair fair) and a pose by ANA_MATIONS. YEAH Windlight. Glad to have you back.

The hair from SkyShop is color change and comes with a hud for viewing the colors. The color change is NOT bodylight - facelight friendly. At least not on my system. It comes with a darling FALL purse (browns and black) with hold animation.

Don't miss two very nice poses from Torrid Midnight's booth. There are also some clothes which I may blog separately. So get out to the Orange and Red sims of the hair fair. I'll finish up the other two quadrants soon.

So I avoided the Hair Fair at the beginning. Not that I didn't want to go, simply because I didn't want to swim through the jello. So up very early here in my world, I ventured over -- sans many prims mind you -- and enjoyed a very sparsely populated dessert. Yeah! So NOW is the time to go if you haven't been.

There have been lots of post on hair fair freebies, but there are so many (thank you designers) that I am sure some were missed. At least "I" missed them. So I am going to give you yet another brief tour including some things that AREN'T hair. All gifts were either free or $1. And Teagan has graciously made a LIST of the hair fair booths so you can find any you are interested in easily.

Remember you can BUY things there and part of the money goes to charity :D

This is only a sampling of the Red and Orange sims and I know even that will need to be in two or more parts. Here's the pics:

It was pointed out to me be Madeleine that there is no Hairspray in the hair fair list. I believe the hair above must have come from Mirada. It seems like they own the Hairspray sim? Anyway if you love this, try the Miradaslurl on the list. Good luck. Sorry.Curio actually has a hair pack with a variety of styles each in one color (some bright hues). The necklace in two sizes is included in their gift.

I saw a notice on the feed that the new club SEVEN was dispensing with its cover charge tonight AND that it had a lot of good photo ops. So I got dressed up in my Crimson Shadow mini and took a tour of the much hyped (not a bad thing) music venue.

There are indeed many great photo opportunities. The chairs are multipose with menus (how nice) and there are "naughty" pose balls sprinkled throughout the streets. Not having a partner to photograph with, I skipped those area (wink). Just turn on Transparency to see the balls. There are tiny floating Ms and Fs around and now and then a real pose ball or two.

The shops are all photorealistic with the window textures from real life shops somewhere. This gives the area a very empty city street feel -- at least when I was there early and one of the few people on the sim :D

There are waiting areas and lounge areas and DJ club areas and a central stage. Since I couldn't use my map function without crashing (the new server update and I are NOT doing well together) I just wandered and eventually found some folks setting up the show.

The bar is impressive and very realistic. There are many people sized chairs to lounge in and I bet they too have menu animations (I so like that). It may LOOK like I am chatting up the bar tender but in effect, I am busily typing into my Blogger window so that YOU too can see this and maybe hurry down if you want to enjoy the show.

Since I don't have sound turned on it won't do me much good to stay and I will probably crash anyway (sigh). The land pass here is $165 and you can also purchase a VIP pass (no idea how much that is sorry). Since I have exactly $321 in my Linden account, I won't be coming back here. BUT I was VERY happy to get it see it all.

If you journey over to the daisy hunt at House of Heart, be sure and pick up the free release gifts for August 29th. They are out and they are hot!

I have favorites of course and mine may not be yours -- that's why there are lots of styles of hair after all!

This is Wild Isabella in heather. It is a sister design to one from the hair fair. I so love these feathers and hat. This is for someone who REALLY likes a lot of hair for sure. Lots of fun and you definitely make a statement.

This is Dirty Girl in birch. Slightly punk but not too much, it is casual with some hard edges in the mix. This is no dame to mess around with (wink).

My personal favorite of this release is Margo in burgundy. I liked it SO much I did the "edit linked prim" thing to get it to fit around my ears! So I now have a new skill. This is good. So cute and it could be dressy as well.

The last of the four is Sable in cream -- an abundance of thick hair tied in its own knot!

This week's gift from Ivey at Sn@tch is a cute little number with maroon striped pants and a (gasp) sheer top. It has great ruffled cuffs and a skull belt. I feel like a pirate winch. Find it somewhere on the wall. It says group gift on it so hard to miss. 0 Linden as always.

Shown with the just released hair from House of Heart - Wild Isabella in heather (get yours while you are at the hunt). Shoes by ::69, Necklace by WRONG, Pose by Last Stand Animations.

There's a new hunt going on at BOTH HOH and Bewitched Hairsims. Some of the renters have joined in so there are lots of things to look for. I did a cursory tour of both sims and picked up some nice hair (we can always use more hair) as well as a lovely necklace from Tuli and some poses from Dove (LAP - One is shown here).

You are looking for daisys which can be LARGE but the ones I found are mostly daisy size. You can see them with camera controls but flying low (you can't actually walk right now - LOL) and pausing now and then would be a good plan. Not all the vendors are taking part and some of the flowers are outside or in OTHER stores than the gift giver's (yes, really). Many are 0 Linden and some are $1. I didn't buy any $1 linden daisies simply because I didn't need anything and just wanted to report.

There are some funny things and great things and lots of places to explore. So have some fun and venture out. And there are things for the guys too!

Shown here are some of my favorites including a tank from Rare Breed (logowear but cute), a lovely necklace from Tuli (in her shop and easy to find) and one of the many hairs I found - Victoria in Irish Red. Shown with LaynieWearcapris.

The new release hairs are out at HOH if you venture out tonight. I will post them in the morn. YAWN!

It looks like it may be a tough day at Phil's Place. I've crashed twice (VERY unusual) and watched friends log on and immediately off several times. So have to assume I am not alone. Alas! Rather than wait for something to go along with this item from yesterday, I give you:

Bliss Couture sent out this off the wall dress to the Ewing Events VIP Guest List. The dress features sequin trim with fur trimmed gloves. If you are not a formals gal, you could wear the glitch pants as leggings with boots and a fancy belt. The Ewing VIP group is open to the public and has weekly novice runway contests as well as full production runway shows. You will need to IM the owner of the group if you want to join.

So yesterday was indeed an interesting day in both of my worlds. Through serendipity and a string of events I ended up with some lovely items from LanynieWear. This started with a conversation about finding something to wear with the GREAT ALB ROBIN BOOTS I blogged yesterday. So here I am on my new couch from the FreeStyle hunt in my Buttondown Oatmeal Shirt and Basic Jeans in chocolate. Don't worry. Close ups are coming.

I am also renaming my "review" category to "Showcase Review" as it is primarily my intent to showcase the items -- a point from yesterday's drama thought out and adjustments made.

So, close ups!

The Basic Jeans come in both pants and undies layers. Shown here with the prim leg attachments they work perfectly with the bottom of the ALB boots - most likely many boots. The shirt comes in a variety of layers also with the textured belt option shown as a jacket layer.

Here is the same outfit without leg prims and belt and with the boot tops. The prim collar and cuffs worked well for me. They of course might take some adjustment on a pose stand. Such is the way of the prim :D The jeans also come in capri length with prim cuffs -- not suitable for these boots but they would be great with sandals.

Laynie also sent along some darling capris called "Tea". They have a wonderful texture with sort of a " I live in these - I'm not giving them up" feel. I paired them with Untied Sandals from Shoes Simply Shoes and the great free necklace from yesterday. So cute!

I wanted to post this here rather than as a response to Kristi Maurer's article, because I was truly upset with some of her ideas. NOT for myself, but for the designers who GENEROUSLY GIVE LOVELY, BRAND NEW -- OFF THE WALL items to the community.

Each day , several times a day, I eagerly open up the feeds in the (naive) hope that there will be something new released, or someone will be reviewing something I didn’t know about before. Instead, I see piles upon piles of freebies (which is good, if you’re a newbie and need some free crap, so keep on keeping on, freebie finders)...

My audience is NOT the newbie population. Most newbies don't even know the feed (or the blogs) exist! I can't speak as to others, but I go to a great deal of trouble to ONLY blog first quality items. Not all of them are free, but many are and TONS of items never make it to my blog.

I do not SPEND money in SL. If I had an unlimited budget I might wander and try and wander and try and find a new undiscovered designer to call my own -- yadayada! That is not an option for me.

I don't love everything on the feed either. But instead of complaining, why not find the blogs that you LIKE and simply bookmark those and read them?

I may be mistaken -- and I am sure I will hear about it if I am -- but isn't the person complaining about the laziness of bloggers the one that posted the SAME boring green logo that said "Simply the Best" on the feed over and over and over with a link to her newest article on her blog? If not, I apoligize in advance; I never clicked on them.

From the generous lady that gave us -- literally -- the fantastic Indian ensemble (still available), today we have boots. Very KEWL boots in nice Fall colors. $0 Linden boots! Find them in the shoe department at ALB Dream Fashion. Edit: Because of the apostrophe in the SLURL you may have to look this up. Sorry. I tried several times to fix it to no avail. http://slurl.com/secondlife/A'ksha%20Dunes/180/83/351.

There are other colors and patterns of these boots available at $300. THANK YOU! Top by Dutch Touch, pants by Zaara, belt by Yurakucho, hair by WRONG, pose by LAP.

There is a lovely steampunk necklace available for free at Joanne Capra's Prim Jewelry. It is fun and a great addition to your new Fall 08 wardrobe. Shown with my NEW hair from House of Heart (Krasa in coffee bean). VERY pretty. Not free :D and a top by Imperial Elegance.

Bliensen + Maitai has this really cute necklace for you for $1L. They have a booth at the very lovely QRI shopping area which seems to be mostly Japanese designers. I didn't find any other great freebies here but there are lots and lots of very interesting items including props with poses and the hair pictured above from Nico. It is definitely worth taking some time to explore here. The textures are rich and suck you right into the magical circus-like world.

The Perfect Gift has a lovely dollarbie out -- if September is your rez day or your RL birthday it is a birthstone necklace, earrings and bracelet (not shown). If not, it is simply a very lovely set of sapphires to go with all your blue stuff :D. Either way, get there soon as this is only good until the end of the month.

And on a personal note -- I have finally have my own place. Its just an air space rental but the house and all the furnishings were gifts from hunts and lucky chairs and such. It was great fun to put it all together and nice to have a spot to call my own.

There seem to be a lot of red with black minis out and about --a trend perhaps. And this new one from Glam Couture is just as cute as its sisters. This is strapless and a bit less frilly than the others of the week, so it's perfect for some fun and outrageous accessories. I've been so wanting to wear this new Tousled Isabella - bitter chocolate hair from House of Heart. It comes complete with Vegas showgirl feathers (well maybe not quite Vegas, but you get the idea). I added the cigarette with holder from Animah and my basic black Juicy shoes (peppercorn to be exact) and I have a very cute and attention getting outfit. Find the dress in the black boxes with logos by the front entry. There is floating text now so they are easier to find. Yeah!

Elate! has added a dress to the Free Style sim hunt. Find it in the Free Speerit store. It is either $1 linden or $0. I added some extremely nice shoes and jewelry that came with a Bellisima notice today from Fashion Consolidated. Such a lovely present of jewelry and shoes. Thank you. Shown with Daphne - steel hair from House of Heart -- available at the hair fair. Pose by LAP.

So before I post this :D -- here is my new skin disclaimer. I will not STOP blogging for skin designers.

These skins appear to be good quality. I have been to the shop and it appears businesslike. The creator of the skin didn't just pop into the world. This is what I know. We all like something different and so it is the buyer's responsibility to look carefully at demos and see how they fit THEIR avatar before purchasing.

And with that said -- here is Eva.

Eva comes in various skin tones. I was sent Natural and Tan. This may be a bit darker for their names than the skin you are wearing. It is quite obvious from the vendors which skin would be close to your choice of color. Above is Eva in Natural. Of the six makeups I have, I will show you a few -- both in natural and tan versions. They come shaved and regular.

Eva in Natural Tones.

Eva in Tan Tones.

I personally like the naturalness of the eyebrows and the darker lipstick versions. I love the LONG built in eyelashes. This of course is taste. The nose didn't fit exactly right on my avatar but some tweaking may easily have fixed that. The skin tones worked for me and I liked the earthiness of the colors.